Enron and Bush: the mystery deepens

Commentary: Energy papers yield more questions

By

DavidCallaway

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) - Think the flap over the Bush administration and Enron is winding down? Think again.

The release by the administration of thousands of pages of documents related to its energy task force last year has only heightened speculation that the Bush team is hiding something by refusing to provide logs of Vice President Dick Cheney's meetings with energy executives.

While 11,000 pages of documents were released on court orders this week, most were heavily edited to blank out any useful information, particularly e-mails. The government continues to hold back an additional 15,000 documents, citing privacy and security concerns, as well as the mysterious Cheney logs.

Cobbling from what little information was made available, reporters were able to quickly establish that Secretary of the Energy Spencer Abraham met almost exclusively with energy executives while helping formulate taskforce policy last year, while ignoring any submissions from environmental or consumer groups.

Now, the idea that a Republican administration would be pro-business at the expense of the little guy is hardly a secret. In fact, I think it's written in the party's charter.

The practice, however, goes to the heart of what I said back in January when the whole Enron
ENRNQ
mess broke in Washington. That the fallout will include a series of disclosures that will reveal in stark detail just how the current administration prefers to do business, which is exclusively with its industry buddies and a sneering disregard for the public at large. So far, so true.

But the question remains. What could they possibly be hiding?

Industry executives are baffled. Those who met with Cheney said they didn't recommend anything different than they've publicly requested for years. See full story. Consumer groups and environmentalists don't have a clue either.

For an administration that has taken such a tough stand against Arthur Andersen in the Enron case, indicting the company and threatening the livelihood of 85,000 staff worldwide over documents shredded by a few dozen, the fact that it is trying itself to shield documents from the public is glaringly ironic.

It's part of a pattern of holding back information that not only taints the administration with Enron, but leads to skepticism about any of its other motives, such as its messing with the Clean Air Act or its developing a shadow government in case of attacks on Washington.

Now, three months after the whole thing erupted, we're still getting new bombshells on a weekly basis. The most recent one is that Secretary of the Army Thomas White, a former senior Enron executive, not only kept options on shares worth several millions of dollars when he left Enron last May - possibly violating terms of an ethics agreement - but that he was in touch with Enron on a frequent basis as it began to collapse in October.

White made 13 calls to the company in October and sold about $3 million in stock during the month. That's pretty involved, especially at a time when he was supposedly coordinating the invasion of Afghanistan.

White on Wednesday offered to resign if the flap over his Enron ties hampers his ability to do his job. So far at least, he retains the support of Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. But the fact he would even feel the need to make the offer at a time when his job is so important to the country shows just how hard the administration has been hit by this scandal.

From the very beginning, the Enron story has been much more than a business story about a failed company. It has been a story of greed and corruption on such a scale that both Washington and Wall Street have had to make changes to the way they operate that would have been unthinkable a year ago.

Who would have guessed before Enron that Bush would agree to campaign finance reform? Who would have guessed that the accounting industry would finally succumb to pressure to abandon its inherent conflicts of interest in auditing and consulting, or that Wall Street would abandon pro forma earnings?

And we haven't even gotten to the highlight of the show yet, the indictment of the Enron executives themselves, their trials, their testimonies, and their bombshells.

No, this story has legs. And as long as any of the players in this drama refuse to come clean - including at the White House -- it will continue to astound us with fresh revelations, one at a time.

Intraday Data provided by SIX Financial Information and subject to terms of use. Historical and current end-of-day data provided by SIX Financial Information. All quotes are in local exchange time. Real-time last sale data for U.S. stock quotes reflect trades reported through Nasdaq only. Intraday data delayed at least 15 minutes or per exchange requirements.